Clinton Gives OK to Tougher Rules to Clean Up the Air

After seven months of the most contentious environmental debate in years, President Clinton decided Wednesday to impose strict new standards designed to clean smog and soot from the air in hundreds of the nation’s cities and towns.

The standards, which will pose a huge challenge to Southern California, are intended to reduce the number of deaths, illnesses and lost work days linked to air pollution--even at the potentially expensive cost of restricting motor vehicles and installing new power plant technology.

The decision delighted environmentalists, who were expecting Clinton to weaken the proposal put forward in November by the Environmental Protection Agency. It disappointed business and industry, which had warned that the new benchmarks were too onerous. Clinton’s action also pits him against many of the nation’s mayors, who fear the economic impact that could follow.

Congress, where many members have expressed sharp opposition to the plan, has the authority to defeat it. But a showdown might be unlikely because it could put legislators in the politically awkward position of seeming to vote against youngsters, the elderly and others susceptible to respiratory diseases aggravated by air pollution.

The measure, the most far-reaching environmental course set in the 1990s, would force American cities and states to mount aggressive, multibillion-dollar efforts to clean up the air over the next 15 years or face harsh federal sanctions, such as a freeze on federal highway funds.

The new national limits mean that the air in more than 400 counties, including nearly all of Southern California, would be deemed unsafe.

The Los Angeles basin faces the tallest hurdles by far, since its residents are breathing the greatest concentration of ozone, known popularly as smog, and fine particles, or soot, in the nation.

Pollution in the Riverside and San Bernardino areas and inland parts of Los Angeles and Orange counties sometimes soars to levels more than twice as high as the new limits would allow. Each of Southern California’s eight counties, home to a total of 17 million people, would exceed one or both standards.

EPA Administrator Carol Browner argued throughout the angry debate over the standards that scientific findings allowed her no room to soften the original proposal, and Clinton ultimately agreed. But the program will not be fully implemented by states and cities for at least 15 years.

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“If we have high standards for protecting the environment, but we’re flexible in how those standards are implemented and we give adequate time and adequate support for technology and creativity . . . we can protect the environment and grow the economy,” Clinton said in a speech Wednesday in Nashville, Tenn.

“We can never be put in the position of choosing one or the other, because in the end a declining economy has always, always led to an environment that’s less clean--always,” he said.

Under the Clean Air Act, the government is required to set clean-air standards and update them based on scientific studies--without consideration of the economic impact. The standards establish the levels at which air is considered too dirty to be healthful.

Critics of the stricter standards, particularly those in an industry coalition led by major auto, oil and utility companies, argued in a multimillion-dollar lobbying campaign that the science was not clear about the impact soot and smog have on health.

Industry representatives said the new standards might lead to bans on the use of barbecues, fireworks and lawn mowers, as cities and counties sought to eliminate air pollution. EPA and state air-quality officials, however, deny that.

About 411 counties would exceed the new standards for soot or smog or both; 134 counties already violate existing limits. Most counties could meet the new standards by taking steps similar to those already underway in California.

Under a multiple-step timetable, communities will have more than a decade and a half to reduce air pollution--by encouraging reduced use of automobiles by, for example, imposing river-crossing tolls in New York City or building mass transit systems in California; and by converting power plants to cleaner fuels. California already has the most stringent exhaust emission standards in the world.

But short of draconian steps to control population or driving, there are no technologies available today that would clean up enough of California’s pollution to comply with the new limits.

California Gov. Pete Wilson’s smog chief said Wednesday he supports tighter standards, and he was especially heartened to hear Clinton promise that states and cities will have control over clean-air strategies and be given federal assistance and time for developing new technologies.

“If we have the kind of control we’ve been promised, we believe we can come up with a reasonable plan,” said state Air Resources Board Chairman John Dunlap.

The EPA predicts the new pollution limits will save 15,000 people from premature death, and prevent several hundred thousand asthma attacks and cases of bronchitis, especially among children.

It estimates the controls will cost businesses and consumers between $6.6 billion and $8.5 billion a year beginning in the year 2007. Industry groups have predicted the dollar costs could be 10 times higher.

With relatively minor changes, the measure Browner announced at the White House Wednesday mimics the proposal she unveiled in November.

It establishes for the first time standards for some of the tiniest pieces of soot, given off by burning coal and oil, and invisible without magnification.

These particles, 2.5 microns across--or roughly one twenty-eighth the diameter of a human hair--are so small they can become lodged far into the lungs.

Under the government’s plan, any community in which the amount of such soot in a cubic meter of air exceeded an annual average of 15 micrograms, and in which the 24-hour average on any given day exceeded 65 micrograms, would risk violating the standards. But communities would be allowed to exceed the limits several times--to allow for occasional spikes created by atmospheric conditions--before being considered out of compliance.

Standards for larger particles--those less likely to deeply invade the respiratory system--would be slightly less stringent. Nevertheless, Clinton’s decision ended up going slightly beyond Browner’s original plan on this score, limiting the number of occasions on which a community’s air could be dirtier than the established standard.

The new standard for ozone--the lung-irritating gas formed when fumes from various sources bake in the sun--calls for a concentration of no more than 0.08 parts per million in an eight-hour period. But in this category, too, communities would be given leeway, allowed to exceed this average measurement several times by not counting the three highest counts during a year.

This course allows health officials to focus on long-term exposure, which EPA officials say poses more of a health risk than occasional days when air is abnormally foul.

Officials at the agency, caught in the midst of a debate of hurricane intensity, were nearly gleeful when word of Clinton’s decision reached them.

“This is huge. . . . I don’t think anyone thought it would come out this good,” said one senior aide, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

Industry leaders vowed Wednesday to persuade Congress to weaken the smog limits. But just Tuesday, Sen. Alfonse M. D’Amato (R-N.Y.) announced that he would not only defend tough standards but lead any fight against weakening them.

Drawing attention to the potential political difficulties facing members voting to relax the standards after the failure of the lobbying campaign against the plan, the Sierra Club’s Dan Becker said:

“If Congress wants to have a vote and choose between healthy kids and polluter profits, make my day. If they couldn’t win in the back rooms, they sure aren’t going to win in the light of day with the American people watching.”

Jot Condie, the California Manufacturer’s Assn.’s legislative director for environmental quality, said: “The EPA’s proposed standards are draconian and based on questionable findings. We thought that, given the breadth of opposition coming from business and job providers and Congress, there would have been more of a thoughtful approach by the White House in seeing if there could be some sort of compromise.”

John Garrison, managing director of the American Lung Assn., called the decision “a victory for the tens of millions of Americans who suffer the effects of air pollution.” The group sued the EPA in 1993 to force it to establish new standards.

Times staff writers Elizabeth Shogren in Nashville and Dina Bass in Washington contributed to this story. Gerstenzang reported from New York and Cone from Los Angeles.

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Air Pollution Levels

Stricter standards endorsed by President Clinton would require considerable cuts in fine particles in local air.

Proposed 24-hour limit: 65

1995 levels*

*Micrograms per cubic meter

Source: AQMD